The Lord of Vik-Lo: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 3) (40 page)

  Thorgrim stepped forward and pushed his way through the shield wall between Harald and Ornolf until there was only open ground and the plank road between him and the gathering force of Irish warriors, two hundred yards away. He shook his head in disgust. If the Norwegians and Danes had not been so foolishly distracted fighting amongst themselves they could have seen this coming and killed half of the Irish before they even got over the wall. Now, because of their own stupidity and carelessness, they would have a long and bloody fight on their hands.

  The Irish had seen the shield wall, that was clear. Even from that distance Thorgrim could see arms pointing and heads turned in their direction. Warriors were streaming out from behind the buildings and forming up on the road not far from Grimarr’s hall. Small clusters of men at first, and then dozens and then a hundred or more, gathering in a disorderly group. The sun reflected off bright weapons and helmets and the polished bosses of shields. Their chain mail seemed to ripple with dark and light.

  Thorgrim could hear a voice above all of them and though he could not make out the words, nor would he have understood them if he could, he recognized the note of command. The crowd of men parted like water and a massive figure emerged from the press, more than a head taller than the next man, a heavy black cloak on his shoulders, a shield in one hand, battle ax in the other, what seemed to be an acre of chain mail covering his chest. At first Thorgrim thought the man had a cloth wrapped around his face, but then he realized it was a beard, a great tangle of beard that hid everything from his nose down.

  “That’s Lorcan,” Harald said. “Their jarl, the chief of the Irish here abouts.”

  Thorgrim nodded. He had never seen Lorcan, but he had heard quite a bit about the man in the short time he had been at Vík-ló. “He is just as I imagined,” Thorgrim said.

  That voice of command belonged to Lorcan, and his bellowing did not cease as he gestured and pointed and pushed men into position. And his men hustled to obey.

  “Harald, can you make out anything Lorcan says?” Thorgrim asked. Harald cocked his ear toward the distant Irishman and for a moment was silent, then shook his head.

  “I can hear him, father, but I can’t make out the words.”

  Thorgrim grunted. “No matter. I can well guess what he’s saying.”

  What Lorcan was doing, organizing his men for an attack against an enemy shield wall, Thorgrim had done many times in the past. Sometimes it was a powerful enemy and his chief task had been to get his men’s battle madness up, to get them to that place where they were eager to fling themselves into the murderous storm of ax, shield and spear. And sometimes he had been in a better place, preparing an overwhelming force to roll down on a much weaker adversary, the place where Lorcan was now.

  Thorgrim turned and looked at the faces of his own men and he recognized their various expressions; some stoic and unreadable, some clearly holding down the terror, some looking bored, which Thorgrim knew was just another mask for fear. Harald looked focused, ready, but Thorgrim knew that the boy was thinking about that sword blow coming down where his neck and his shoulder met, and at the same time trying very hard to not think about it.

  “Well, there’s a lot of the sons of bitches,” Thorgrim said, loud enough for all his men to hear. “But they’re not Norsemen or Danes, they’re just Irish.” He knew that would not bring any great relief. Most of these man had fought Irish, and they knew they were not an enemy to be dismissed.

  “You know your business, and the work you have to do today,” he went on. “Stand fast. Hold your ground. Let them come at you and kill them. Hold your ground until Bersi’s men come and ram spears up their asses and the day is ours!”

  The men cheered. They raised weapons and banged them on shields and yelled insults and shouted their battle cry.

  And two hundred yards away, Lorcan’s men cheered as well, and then rolled forward in their inexorable advance.

The warrior’s revenge

is repaid to the king,

wolf and eagle stalk

over the king’s sons.

                                                                 Egil’s Saga

Harald and Ornolf made an opening and Thorgrim pushed through to his place behind the shield wall. He was alone. Starri was gone. Where, he did not know, and he did not have time to wonder about it. Lorcan’s men were advancing, and they were coming on fast. Not a steady, disciplined approach but rather something just on the edge of a disorganized rush.

  “Steady men, stand firm!” Thorgrim shouted. The Irish were building momentum and Thorgrim guessed they would be at a full run by the time they hit the shield wall. They could see the Norsemen were few in number. They smelled blood and easy prey, and they were eager for it.

  Lorcan was at the center of their line. Thorgrim expected him to slow his advance, to get his men under control, but he only moved faster with every step, and the others followed behind, keeping pace, none daring to get ahead of him. Fifty yards and Thorgrim could see Lorcan’s wild hair flowing behind him. His cloak was shucked back over his shoulders revealing massive arms; the shield and ax looked undersize, like toys in his hands.

 
No wonder men follow him,
Thorgrim thought.
He’s a frightening bastard
. It had been a long time since Thorgrim had been afraid of any man, but he could well see how one might fear the likes of Lorcan.

  All along the shield wall men shuffled in place, digging heels in where they could, bracing, adjusting their grip on weapons and swords, making ready for the impact of the men rushing at their wall of wood and iron, steel and flesh. Shields made dull thumping sounds as they banged against the shields next to them in the line, chain mail made its familiar rustling noise.

  Twenty feet remained between the Norsemen and the Irish. Thorgrim adjusted his grip on Iron-tooth, and as he did, an unearthly shriek ripped through the morning, cutting through the pounding of running feet, the clank of weapons, the shouts of men with their blood lust up. Everything seemed to stop and Starri Deathless burst like a pheasant from the tall grass to the right, still shrieking, battle axes in hand.

  He had shed his tunic and streaked his face and chest with black mud. He made a wild, undulating cry as he exploded from the place where he was hidden, racing at the on-coming Irish, weapons held high.

  Starri was only one man, one against more than one hundred. Any of the Irish with a spear or sword could have cut him down in his headlong, heedless rush. But his surprise attack and the horrific sound of his screeching battle cry and his utterly demonic look were so stunning that the left wing of the Irish line staggered to a halt. Men who had been focused on the shield wall, which seemed to offer little danger, were now knocked into confusion by this assault from an unexpected quarter. It brought them up short, confused and frightened by this seeming change of fortune.

  Then Starri was on them, leaping high in the air and whirling the axes the way he had been whirling his arms moments before the fight. The Irish warriors in front of him had time only to begin raising their shields when the axes came down on their heads. One man was helmeted, the other not, but it made no difference, as the power of Starri’s attack split their skulls in a welter of blood.

  Now there was a gap in the Irish line and Starri flung himself through. Thorgrim saw his axes rise again but Starri himself was lost to sight behind the startled, stumbling men, and Lorcan’s plan of attack crumbled like dry-rotted wood. The men on the right end of his line were unaware of what was happening on the left and they kept up their charge, yelling, weapons held high, pounding down the plank road. And then as one they seemed to realize that the left side of the line had stopped and, worse yet, they were getting ahead of Lorcan, who had also pulled up short at Starri’s attack.

  One by one they slowed and Thorgrim saw their expressions change from rage to confusion as the discipline of the line collapsed. And then Thorgrim saw a chance.

  “At them! At them! Advance!” Thorgrim shouted. It was insane to give up this carefully staged defense and fling themselves at a much stronger enemy, but Starri’s madness had become his madness, the berserker’s blood seemed to course through him as well.

  “At them!” His words echoed up and down the line and his warriors stepped forward. Such an order might well have brought confusion down on Thorgrim’s men, who were braced and ready to absorb an assault. But they were disciplined, accustomed to obeying without hesitation, and they, too, had seen this chance. They had seen the hesitation and the uncertainty and they were ready to push into that breach and start the killing.

  “Hold your line! Hold your line!” Thorgrim shouted as
Far Voyager
’s crew moved forward. He did not want his men doing what Lorcan’s had, allowing the discipline of the shield wall to fall apart. And they did not. They kept their line intact as they rolled on, and when they hit Lorcan’s men it was as an unbroken line of shields and weapons at the ready.

  There was an audible sound as the two lines came together, the impact of seventy shields hitting seventy more, the ring of steel on steel, the shouts of enraged warriors, and, within seconds, the shriek of the dying. Lorcan’s men had been thrown into disarray, but they were not new to this work, and by the time Thorgrim’s line hit theirs they had nearly recovered and were ready to fight.

  Thorgrim stepped back and looked down the length of his shield wall. Men were braced, one leg behind the other as if they were shoving against some nearly immovable thing, which indeed they were; the line of Irish warriors. Swords thrust through the gap between shields, the long, wicked iron points of spears darted in and out. To Thorgrim’s right, a man named Gest who had joined them in Dubh-linn staggered back from the line. His mouth was open, blood was streaming from the place where his nose and right eye had been, but before Thorgrim could even move to take his place the men on either side had closed the gap.

  Lorcan was still in the middle of the line, and unlike the rest of the Irish he was not hidden from Thorgrim’s view by the mass of fighting men. He loomed over the shields and helmeted heads. That part of his face that was visible was streaked with blood, his mouth was open as he shouted again and again, the words foreign and meaningless to Thorgrim’s ears.

  Twenty feet down the line from Lorcan’s raging attack, Harald held his place in the wall, wielding his sword. Vengeance Seeker was gone, left on the beach to the south, but he had found another sword, a decent blade.

  Thorgrim thanked the gods that his son was not face to face with Lorcan. Harald, he knew, would have been the first to do battle with that great Irish beast – already had, in fact – though Thorgrim suspected Harald had come closer to death that night than the boy let on. Someday, he knew, Harald would be able to stand against a man like Lorcan in a battle line, but not now. Not now.

  Sutare Thorvaldsson, the Swede, was in front of Lorcan now, but there was little he could do beyond deflecting Lorcan’s furious assault. The battle ax went up and down, up and down, swinging at Sutare and the men to his left and right. The defenders in the shield wall held up their shields and lashed out with their weapons and made not the least impression on the huge Irishman.

 
This cannot last long
, Thorgrim thought, and it did not. Two more blows from Lorcan’s ax and the man to Sutare’s left let his sword arm drop as if he was giving up, but Thorgrim could see that just below the shoulder it had been severed nearly in two. The weapon fell from his hand and the man staggered back. The blood ran bright down his arm and Lorcan, seeing the hole in the shield wall, grinned and swung his ax and charged.

  And Thorgrim was there. It was for this very reason he had placed himself where he had, because if the mountainous Lorcan had worked himself behind the shield wall then all would be lost, the fight over in seconds, not minutes. Thorgrim took three quick steps and before Lorcan even knew he was there and he lashed out with Iron-tooth, driving the point at Lorcan’s throat.

  The blade pierced the thick matt of Lorcan’s beard, and Lorcan, who had not even seen Thorgrim come at him, twisted in surprise, leaning back so the blade missed its mark. He knocked Thorgrim’s sword away with the iron rim of his shield and at the same time swung the battle ax with his right hand, an awkward move, not action but reaction, and Thorgrim sidestepped the stroke.

  “Get back, you son of a whore!” Thorgrim shouted, aware that the words were meaningless to Lorcan, and he drove his shield into the man. He had not expected to push Lorcan back through the gap, but he had thought he might push him back a step or so. In fact he did nothing of the kind. It was like slamming his shield into the trunk of an oak that had stood a hundred years.

  They were close, Thorgrim and Lorcan, their faces inches apart. Lorcan grinned and drew his ax back over his shoulder. Thorgrim, pressed against the man, was unable to raise Iron-tooth, so he stabbed down instead. He felt the blade hit something, something more soft and yielding than the plank road, and Lorcan bellowed in pain. He shoved Thorgrim with his shield and Thorgrim staggered back and Lorcan staggered back in the other direction. Thorgrim allowed himself to look down, a glance as fast as a heartbeat, but enough to see the rent in Lorcan’s leather shoe, the bright red gleam of blood.

 
I’ll have to kill this one like a pack of dogs on a bull
, Thorgrim thought,
wound after wound…

  Fighting men pressed in on Lorcan’s side and he pushed them away, making room for himself. He was limping a bit as he moved, but not much. He was bloodied, and that only made him more angry, and that in turn made him more oblivious to the pain.

  Thorgrim advanced because he still wanted to keep Lorcan back on the other side of the shield wall. Lorcan swung his ax, a wide, sideways sweep, and Thorgrim stopped it with his shield. He staggered under the blow and saw the wood on the backside of his shield shatter, the corner of the ax head driven clean through.

  He feinted low with his sword and Lorcan, already wounded once in the foot, jerked his shield down to stop it happening again. Then Thorgrim went high, over the shield, once more going for Lorcan’s neck. But this time Iron-tooth’s edge hit mail and slipped off, and once again Lorcan knocked the blade away with the edge of his shield.

  Lorcan’s ax was still buried deep in Thorgrim’s shield. Lorcan jerked it hard, breaking it free, tearing a rent in the planks of the shield and knocking Thorgrim off balance. The battle ax came around again. Thorgrim raised his shield in time for the shattered wood face to take most of the blow, but Lorcan’s ax glanced off and kept going.

  Thorgrim twisted and took the blade on his shoulder. He felt the edge of the weapon sever the mail and dig into flesh, felt blood run warm beneath, but the shield and the mail shirt had slowed the ax enough that the wound was a minor thing.

  More critically, Thorgrim was staggered by the blow, off balance, and Lorcan leapt forward to take advantage of that. He made a broad backhand swing with his shield, slamming it into Thorgrim’s fresh wound. The impact produced a wave of agony and sent Thorgrim reeling. He had an image of Lorcan grinning and the big ax rising up overhead. He tried to regain his balance, but before he could, something hit him hard, hit him from behind, and sent him sprawling onto the plank road.

  He heard a deep animal sound, a frantic struggle behind him. He braced for the agony of Lorcan’s ax hacking into his spine even as he rolled over and brought the remains of his shield up to stop it.

  But Lorcan was caught in a new fight now and was not about to cut Thorgrim down. Grimarr Knutson, come up from behind the shield wall, had launched himself at the Irish chieftain, roaring in fury and sweeping at him with sword and shield. And Lorcan was shouting as well, taking Grimarr’s blade with his own shield, flailing with his wide-headed ax. It was like some mythic battle of the old legends, these two, more giant than human, bellowing their fury and hacking at one another with a strength beyond that of mortal men.

  Thorgrim scrambled to his feet. Grimarr, he realized, had saved his life, though certainly he had not meant to, had probably not even realized who it was he was knocking aside. Grimarr had intended only to clear a path to Lorcan, the one man in Ireland he might hate as much as he hated Thorgrim.